


cut my lip

by nevermordor



Category: Megalo Box (Anime)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional, M/M, One Night Stands, kinda hurt-comfort if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 06:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20466365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: “It must be nice,” he says, “having someone believe in you that much.”He can feel Yuri watching him, but Joe can’t bring himself to look up. He stares at his fists, clenching, unclenching, broken fingernails digging into his palms.“I should get going,” Yuri says at length.“Sure,” Joe says. “See you around, champion.” He turns back toward the bay. Yuri’s footsteps fade out. Joe tracks the distant headlights of cars as they cross the bridge, filled with people going all kinds of places.“Joe.” Yuri’s at the top of the stairs to the riverwalk. Behind him the streetlights glow neon orange, casting a long shadow. “I believe in you,” Yuri says quietly.





	cut my lip

**Author's Note:**

> literally just me, scratching a writing itch that i've had for over a year now. i still have a lot of feelings about this show and these guys. title credits to twenty one pilots.

He’s standing on the riverwalk, his lip busted and his head pounding with a dull headache, and he’s thinking about Yuri’s hands. Normally Joe only lets his thoughts spin out when he’s flying across the desert on his bike, but there’s no outrunning himself this time. So he thinks again and again about the punch that knocked Iglesias on his ass, just like he knew it would, until he’s startled by the dog barking. He’s startled by Yuri too, and even more startled when he doesn’t drive off but descends the stairs and joins Joe on the riverwalk.

“Hell of a fight,” Joe says.

Yuri smiles faintly, with none of the haughtiness from the first time they met. There’s stubbled bruising already forming along his jaw. Sweat dries in his hair. His hands keep twitching with lingering adrenaline, and he keeps them hidden in his pockets. It’s easier talking to him than Joe would have thought.

“I wanna have a real match against you, pure and simple,” he finds himself saying. “I get the feeling that, against you, I can go further than I’ve ever gone before.” He doesn’t realize part of himself is bracing for laughter, for dismissal, until Yuri doesn’t do either of these things. He only listens and Joe’s chest goes tight with fierce appreciation. “What about you?” he asks. “What are you fighting for?”

Yuri looks toward the stadium, where the lights still burn. “A dream. Someone believed in me when I was nothing and brought me this far. I want to make her dream come true. That’s why I do it.”

He wonders what it’s like: to be so certain in yourself, to have purpose and direction and meaning behind every move you make. He’s certain of his own hands, what they’re capable of, what he’s capable of. It’s all he has, that certainty, and it still won’t change anything and he is suddenly so goddamn tired. “It must be nice,” he says, “having someone believe in you that much.”

He can feel Yuri watching him, but Joe can’t bring himself to look up. He stares at his fists, clenching, unclenching, broken fingernails digging into his palms.

“I should get going,” Yuri says at length.

“Sure,” Joe says. “See you around, champion.” He turns back toward the bay. Yuri’s footsteps fade out. Joe tracks the distant headlights of cars as they cross the bridge, filled with people going all kinds of places.

“Joe.” Yuri’s at the top of the stairs to the riverwalk. Behind him the streetlights glow neon orange, casting a long shadow. “I believe in you,” Yuri says quietly.

He leaves Joe standing on the riverwalk, the wind at his back.  
  
  
  
  
The old man’s been on his ass for months about his form. Bitching at him about “all aggression, no guard” and Joe has been trying to get better, knows well that the moment you let your guard down, the world will break the legs out from under you.

But in the moment that Nanbu’s voice crackles in his ear, screaming for him to hit back; the moment his punch connects with Burroughs’ face, and Burroughs’ eyes go dim; the moment that Joe realizes his fists have done exactly what he always knew they could — for that sliver of a moment, Joe is caught off his guard.

Burroughs hits the mat. The crowd erupts. He glimpses Yuri, waiting for him, just before the press rush the ring and the referee makes the final call and the crowd screams even louder.

Sachio cries when he wins, leaking snot and tears all over Joe’s pants. He cries again later, quiet and curled up in his bed, as Joe grips Nanbu’s arm and helps him carefully wash the blood off his face in the kitchen sink.

It’s only later, as he washes blood out of his hair in the same kitchen sink, that the weight and promise of victory settles itself over him. Joe watches through one swollen eye as water and threads of blood swirl in the drain and for a moment, he could swear he feels a small piece of the world change.  
  
  
  
  
Two nights later, he goes for a ride.

He’s in a dangerous kind of mood. No matter how many rounds he goes with Aragaki in training, no matter how much he jogs and does sit-ups and push-ups and everything the old man tells him to, he can’t shake it off. He can feel it behind his eyelids when he tries to sleep. He can feel it rising up through the base of his spine, coursing through him, like on windier nights, when the old power lines go molten and shoot off showers of sparks, all that electricity running loose and wild.

The air’s humid, a storm rolling in off the bay. He finds himself circling Shirato Stadium, like he knew he would. What he isn’t expecting is Yuri, parked in the main lot out front, leaning against the hood of his sports car. Joe nearly skids in a puddle before managing to right himself. He coasts in closer, pulls up next to Yuri and cuts the engine. “Hey, champion.”

“Hey, yourself.” Yuri, at least, doesn’t seem surprised to see him. Joe kind of likes that. “You nearly crashed again.”

“Can’t say I don’t know how to make an entrance.”

Yuri’s mouth twitches. “You’re out late, Joe.”

Joe kind of likes that too, he’s realized: the way Yuri says his name, purposeful and slow. “Speak for yourself. Can’t sleep?”

“I always come here at night. I like to run along the river. It’s cooler.”

“Huh.” Joe leans back on his bike, deliberately looks Yuri up and down. “You ain’t dressed to run.”

“No. Not tonight. I wanted to take a drive, clear my head.”

“Aw. Getting nervous on me?”

Yuri raises an eyebrow. Joe grins.

A chilly gust catches at them both. A burst of rain begins to fall, here and there, spattering the concrete and Joe’s jacket. Yuri doesn’t move. He tilts his head back a moment to study the sky and Joe studies him in kind. He’s looked at Yuri’s face a lot the last few months, as motivation to push himself harder in practice, as a reminder of what he’s aiming for. In the neon billboards, in the promo flyers and rankings lists, Yuri is always smirking, certain and untouchable.

Joe looks at him now, at his slightly crooked nose where it was broken once and his pale, thoughtful eyes.

“You fought well the other night, by the way,” Yuri says. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”

“I guess. Was kind of a shit show.”

“It was surprising,” Yuri admits. “You wore Gear.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t need it to fight Burroughs, though. You’re more than capable.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what I’m fucking capable of,” Joe says cheerfully.

Yuri smiles. It’s unexpected. It catches Joe like a critical misstep and while he’s still stumbling to recover, Yuri says, “You should come have a drink with me.”

This too is unexpected. He doesn’t know how to read it right. Guys have said this to him before, and he knows how that kind of thing goes, the quick sideways glances in bars and basements, and where to put his hands and how to use his mouth. But this is different. This is Yuri.

“Maybe I don’t feel like a drink,” he says, just to be stubborn.

“Come back to my place anyway,” Yuri says, only a hint of a challenge in his voice, and Joe’s never really known how to turn down a challenge.  
  
  
  
  
He lingers in the driveway even after Yuri parks his car and unlocks the front door. He checks his tires, because it was a longer ride out to Yuri’s place than he expected, and besides, the brakes are making a weird noise again. But he can’t find anything wrong, so there’s nothing else to do but trudge up the driveway and join Yuri where he’s waiting in the foyer.

The house is big and clean. He’s probably supposed to take his boots off, so he doesn’t, and tracks dust along the pristine floors as he follows Yuri into the kitchen. It’s all steel and marble and silver appliances he doesn’t know the names of. Yuri’s filling the dog’s bowl with food. Joe wanders past him, to the wall of windows that span the back of the house. Beyond the glass, there’s a sprawling yard and trees — beyond that, past the curtains of rain and all the dark, empty space, the hazy glow of the city.

“You can’t see the slums from here,” Joe says as Yuri joins him. “They probably build it like that on purpose.”

“I imagine that being reminded it exists makes things very difficult for them.” 

It’s too quiet, among all the trees and fancy coffee makers, just him and the hyper-awareness of Yuri beside him. “Big house,” Joe says, for lack of anything else to say.

“A gift from Shirato Group. Somewhere I could relax and train in peace.”

“Fancy kennel,” Joe says. Yuri laughs. It softens all the edes in his face and that hard stumble feeling goes through Joe’s chest again. He looks back at the sprawling room behind them, the couch and single armchair, the half-filled bookshelf. “You don’t got any stuff in it, though. All this space and no stuff.”

“I can’t think of anything I want.”

Joe thinks he gets that. Before, everywhere was just a place to wait. To bide his time until he went back into the ring, back to the one thing that he was good at. 

Now, sometimes, there are mornings where he wakes up with the sun on his face because he forgot to close the skylight, and he can hear the splash of the kids playing on the riverbank and Nanbu cursing out the crappy electric stove as breakfast burns. The houseboat and the gym beneath the bridge are small and cold. The windows don’t close all the way when it rains. There’s a bed of his own, and dinner at the same time every evening, and soft humming late at night as Nanbu finishes washing the dishes.

“You never answered my question,” Yuri says. “About why you wore Gear the other night.”

Joe shrugs. “Coach got nervous.”

“Were you afraid you’d lose if you didn’t wear it?”

It isn’t a taunt, a provocation like he might have expected otherwise. It’s just a question.

“No,” Joe says. “I was afraid, but that’s not why I wore the Gear.”

“What were you afraid of?”

Joe looks at Yuri’s hands again. The hands that laid him out flat in the basement of the Drunk Monk, that made him feel alive and awake for the first time in his whole life. “I was afraid I’d never have the chance to fight you again.” The glass is cold where Joe’s palm and fingertips press hard against it. “I don’t wanna be world champion. I just wanna know if I can beat you. I think I can. But I wanna know for sure. I just wanna have that for myself. Was afraid of losing that.”

The rain falls harder, blurring the world outside completely. Yuri takes a step closer. It’s strange being this close to Yuri, closer to him in every possible way than Joe’s ever been before. This close, Yuri’s younger than he realized.

“Joe,” Yuri says and Joe aches, suddenly and impossibly adrift, because pieces of the world keep going and changing on him while he’s not looking. Because stray dogs don’t fight champions, and they don’t have names, and no one looks at them the way that Yuri’s looking at him now.

Yuri takes his wrist and Joe’s arm tenses, his hand curling into a fist out of reflex. Yuri doesn’t flinch. He brings the fist to his mouth, kisses Joe’s knuckles.

There’s danger and pain and fear in not knowing what comes next, like when he speeds and crashes his bike, or goes headlong into what promises to be a bad fight. And then there’s this: the way time goes all slow and heavy and everything bleeds away at the edges — like getting punched in the head, except there’s no pain, just the quiet thrill of not knowing, and Yuri’s lips pressed against ridges of scar tissue.

Joe grips the front of Yuri’s sweater, arches up on the balls of his feet, yanks him closer. They crash together, Joe’s face bumping against the bruises on Yuri’s face, Joe's lip still busted.

Yuri pulls his jacket off his shoulders. It falls to the floor and Yuri’s hands are sliding up under his shirt. The hands that knocked a molar loose and tore the side of his face open, the same hands splayed across the small of his back, dragging knuckles down the notches of Joe’s spine, making Joe breathe out hard against Yuri’s mouth.

Joe plants his hand against Yuri’s chest and pushes hard. It’s not nearly enough to knock Yuri off balance but he takes a step back anyway. Joe follows, crowding him until the backs of Yuri’s knees hit the edge of the couch and he sits down hard. Joe doesn’t wait, just crawls into Yuri’s lap. 

There’s a moment of struggle as he yanks his shirt off. Yuri’s hips push up into his and he cups the back of Joe’s neck, his thumb tracing the curve of a bruise along Joe’s cheek. “Look at you,” Yuri murmurs and Joe shudders and bites his lower lip.

It isn’t like fighting him in the ring, but it’s almost as good, heat and sweat and all the electricity and energy and tension in him spilling over into Yuri’s big hands as he pulls Joe closer. Yuri’s laughter is a low vibration against his mouth and there’s no pain except where Yuri grips him carefully, his fingertips pressing into old bruises.   
  
  
  
  
“Don’t think I’m supposed to fuck my opponent before I fight him,” Joe muses later.

A low snort. “Well, you never do what you’re supposed to.”

Joe grins. “Guess not.”

The rain has stopped. They’ve pulled the expensive blankets off the back of the couch, between them and the cold floor. Joe’s sticky with drying sweat and warm all over. Yuri’s hand rests along the bare curve of his hip.

“I’d like to know what that’s like,” Yuri says abruptly.

He can just make out Yuri’s face in the dark, illuminated by the faint purple glow of his Gear’s sensors. Yuri looks at him, like he has an answer — only he doesn’t know what to say to that at all. Yuri carries duty and dreams that aren’t his own on his shoulders. Joe touches his collarbone, following along the arc of it until it blurs into the contours of his Gear, the edges of the sockets that Shirato drilled into him.

“You can, y’know,” Joe says at length.

“You make it sound so easy.” Yuri’s voice is just a little too tight.

Joe finds the hollow of his throat, warm and vulnerable. He could tear it out with his teeth. Joe presses his mouth against it, feeling the slow flutter of Yuri’s pulse. “I believe in you,” Joe says.  
  
  
  
  
He wakes up to the blankets folded carefully around him and Yuri already gone. Joe expected as much.

In the kitchen, there’s brewed coffee and a bag of fresh bagels on the counter. There’s a piece of paper with instructions on how to lock up and Yuri’s number scribbled underneath it — which Joe didn’t expect.

He’s never had a guy make breakfast for him before. He skips the coffee, sits on the edge of the counter, chewing a poppy seed bagel and looking at the little piece of paper with its line of numbers. He needs to get moving. He’s already late to practice and Sachio will be anxious that he disappeared last night. Joe looks out at the gray sunlight through the glass walls and lets himself wonder what he’d be doing right now if Yuri had hung around until he woke up. Maybe he’ll get to find out next time, tomorrow or the day after. If there is a next time. It’s hard to say for sure.


End file.
